


I'm Not The Kind Of Sick You Can Fix

by electricsheep



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, Dark Sam Winchester, Demon Dean, Explicit Sexual Content, Incest, M/M, Mark of Cain, Season 9 canon divergence, Violence, very slight dean/crowley overtones
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-16 07:44:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4617060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricsheep/pseuds/electricsheep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam turns his head just a few inches, angled down to make them almost eye-level. He breathes, “Thanks,” and Dean tastes it.</p>
<p>“Right back at you.”</p>
<p>He feels blood run hot down his chin from his split lip and sees Sam's eyes follow it, feels Sam's whole body tense against him like he might bolt.</p>
<p>“S'just blood, Sammy,” Dean mutters softly, a little slurred. “Nothin' to be afraid of.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Season 9, goes AU around First Born and onwards with moments from the season threaded through.
> 
> Special thanks to my good friend Kayleigh for reading this about a thousand times and encouraging me to post it.

_you washed me clean like no one ever could  
_ _come closer now and step right into_  
 _the wide mouth_  
 _the sharp teeth of the one you love_ \--Chelsea Wolfe, Sick

  


_Sam had said—he'd said, “I'm leaving,” and Dean had felt winded, wounded, backed into a corner like a small, vicious animal._

_Didn't make much sense but he'd connected bony knuckles with an even bonier cheekbone and struggled with his brother on their borrowed porch, cold air in his lungs like needles; Ionia covered with a brand new powdery layer of snow._

_They'd broken one chain of the porch swing. Dean had shoved his brother through the screen door. Sam had gotten a dirty jab to Dean's kidney and sent him sprawling back against the little kitchen table._

_They'd ended in the living room with Sam pinning Dean against the sofa with his hands bruising Dean's wrists and his thighs scorching Dean's hips and Dean had ached from his toenails to his molars with a warped sense of hours passing, sky outside the window cloud-swollen and dark and dropping thick snow._

_Sam had crushed Dean into the cushions, mouthed a slick, burning patch of spit into his throat but never gone near his lips, not even once, like that of all things was too far. He'd said, “Give it to me, come on,” and Dean had opened up and let Sam mine him for all he was worth, given it up like a senior on prom night 'cause Sam had this thing in him that ruled Dean in some way; a siren call to his blood._

_Dean had asked, afterwards, when Sam had thrown himself over the side of the sofa like he'd forgotten there were just floorboards underneath, like if he stopped touching his brother they'd immediately forget, ”What the fuck is wrong with this picture?” and Sam had shuddered a breath and said nothing._

  


~

  


The second Dean had arched his neck, spread his legs, let Sam have the one thing he didn't have, he'd thought they were hardwired for this. Afterwards he'd concluded that was a lame excuse for coming in your jeans like a thirteen year old because your brother's grinding his dick on you and there had to be some psychological fucking justification somewhere in the world. And he'd stuck to that, riveted himself to it; absent dad, dead mom, fear of separation, a whole raffle of issues to pick from.

He thinks, _it was just that one time, just the shock and grief and they'd needed it maybe, all that crap and they'd needed it._ Sam wouldn't ask again.

Dean wouldn't give it up on a silver plate even if he did.

  


~

  


Son of a bitch _thing_ on his arm feels like it's got its own pulse; one that races, always, just relentlessly hammering away.

The feeling reminds him of post-hunt adrenaline; a hot itch that sets his teeth on edge and makes him too tight in his skin. Except he's sat in the bunker reading a yellowing manuscript and they haven't had a hunt in days and even that was a weak-ass job; fucking poltergeist haunting an auction house.

Like they haven't got better things to do than send a guy disturbingly attached to his Dresden teapot to the other side.

They'd dug out Percy Walden's grave and Dean had been fine until he wasn't, shaking and falling back against the dirt, arching his spine, arms spreading wide to dig his fingers into the grass at the graveside. Crowley keeps telling him to give into it— _it_ , the undefinable it—and for a mind-numbing few seconds, that's how he'd felt; wanton, surrendering to a higher power. The onset of it, sensation like yearning rippling under his flesh, and Sam had gripped his shoulder, hissed his name and struck Dean dumb with how he'd wanted to arch himself into his brother like some easy drunk at a bar.

It passed but it didn't pass. It _lessened_. He'd punched his shovel into the ground like he had a score to settle with soil and worked out his back until he ached and the urgency of it all cooled like the sweat on the back of his neck.

But he sits with the letters Sam dug up at the bottom of some wood-wormed chest in one of their endless dusty rooms, something about seven churches—reading the same line over and over: _consider how far you have fallen_ until his eyes blur—and feels the needful crawl of his skin like a roving itch. He pushes two fingers up his sleeve and presses them hard over the mark like he can cut off the flow with enough pressure, but it doesn't help, doesn't make a single bit of difference.

He sloshes whiskey into a glass and drinks in one burning swallow and that doesn't help much either.

“There's seven, y'know.”

Dean looks up, fingers skipping off the glass in his hand with a compulsive flex. “Huh?”

Sam, arms folded, expectant look on his face, judges him from five feet away. “Seven letters?”

“Yeah,” Dean says dumbly, feels like he's got cotton wool stuffed in his head because Sam standing there kicks his pulse up, makes the knotted scar on his arm throb.

“I left the room a half hour ago and you were reading Ephesus.”

Sam points and Dean, prompted, looks down at the manuscript.

Still Ephesus.

“They're not even that long, dude.”

He claws back some perspective quickly because Sam's acting like Sam, amused and huffy and scholarly. He isn't looking at Dean with either nagging worry or wary betrayal in his eyes for once. It's good, a good feeling, one that overrides the impulse to embed his fist into something solid just for the punitive force of it.

“There's nothing about nothing, Sam. Why am I reading this crap?”

“You're the one powering through the library like you're studying for a Ph.D. Thought you might get a kick out of all the sexual immorality.”

“These guys' idea of sexual immorality is bare ankles, a catalogue would blow their minds.”

Sam's face goes fluid like he's about to laugh but his gaze catches on the bottle by Dean's elbow and it dries right up. There's an awkward moment where Dean looks resolutely at a rip in his jeans like a guilty five year old.

“You, uh—“ Sam threads his fingers into his hair _._ “You planning on eating any time today?”

He's not hungry and he half wants to throw that out there to unsettle Sam some more but it's petty and the urge to piss Sam off isn't just coming from a place of frustration, it's something way more sinister than that.

But Dean says, “Sure, just lemme finish up here,” instead and Sam looks content enough and that's good too.

Truth is, he just doesn't wanna eat. When he was six, he'd bitten into a tablet of charcoal straight off an incense burner at Pastor Jim's because it'd looked look like rum cake. It hadn't tasted like fucking rum cake, though. It'd tasted like burning and felt like ash on his tongue and every time he puts any damn thing in his mouth these days, it's like choking on the same crumbling black embers.

  


~

  


He jams the pick into the hotel room door and steps inside.

Crowley slurs from across the room, “How does it feel?”

There's a needle still in his arm, hanging there half-stuck in his flesh. He sprawls in his chair, looks at the ceiling with his head rolling and the closer Dean gets to him, the more mixed-up he feels. An artificial calm smothering over now fucking pissedhe is. He doesn't wanna imagine that he's _aware_ of Crowley but _fuck_ , it's getting difficult to wilfully ignore the mounting evidence.

He pulls the syringe free and tosses it, runs a thumb over the little red pinprick and sees the corner of Crowley's mouth turn up. Dean jerks back and steadies himself on a sofa arm.

“You're a mess.”

“Oh, Dean.” Crowley's eyes are bloodshot, looks like he's been crying.

“Anyone coulda walked in on you like this.”

“Hence, my reaching out to my favorite murderer.” He gestures, a sloppy arm wave in Dean's direction. “And you didn't answer my question. How does it _feel_?”

Dean huffs a breath through his nose. “What do you want? Why the covert text?”

Crowley eyes him, sly. “Came alone, didn't you?” Dean grits his teeth and ignores it, raising his eyebrows instead. “Maybe I just wanted a chat with a sympathetic ear.”

“What, can't torture up a therapist?”

“Not one that won't go running to my sworn enemy, no.”

Dean drops from the arm to the sofa cushions, leaning right back and crossing his ankles. It's not natural, the way he feels right now, but then _Dean's_ notnatural, not with the winding tendrils of the thing on his arm insinuating themsleves into his personality.

“Tired, darling?”

“Tryin' to put the pinch on an angel uprising and hunting down Abaddon with no help from you doesn't leave me and Sam much nap time.”

“Shouldn't lie during therapy, y'know. It's anti-progress.”

He throws back, “Blow me,” because he knows Crowley will get a predictable kick out of it and he's right, Crowley smirks and tips his head.

“I doubt you getting your end away would help your situation much.”

Crowley drawls the words and Dean hears in a voice that isn't his own, _give it to me, come on, just give it to_ me and imagines, vivid like a punch, warm heat around his dick, long hair he can twist his fingers into—

“Only one thing in all the world can help you, you know.”

“Then why don't you _give it to me_?” Dean asks, rough and quick with an anger that wasn't in him a second ago, words straight from the image in his head to his unthinking mouth.

“Give me a swimming pool filled with human blood and I'd drown myself in it.”

“That's 'cause you're outta control.”

“And you're a paragon of self-restraint. The only difference between us, _Dean_ , is that my addiction only has a tiny risk of cocking up our only chance of destroying the enemy.”

Dean grinds out, “You say enemy like you're not one,” but Crowley smirks, unfazed.

“Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not confident enough in this assumption to just hand you the only weapon that can kill me, but call me naïve,” he pauses, no doubt for dramatic effect, “I don't think you could even if I did.”

“Good. Keep thinking that.”

Crowley sits up and leans forward against his knees. “That's twice you've skilfully avoided my question. I asked how it feels, right now, here with me, how do you feel?”

“Mostly annoyed.”

“And Sam? How do you feel when you're with Sam?” Dean's on his feet so fast the world gets motion blur and then Crowley's on his feet too and Dean's choked, empty on words. “That's interesting.”

He breathes his heart rate back down because Crowley feeds off this crap, it's practically his only source of entertainment these days, and Dean'll be damned if he's gonna be _interesting_ for Crowley.

“What,” Dean says slowly, “is interesting?”

Crowley cocks his head, considering. “Nothing. Just a vague wondering.”

“Well, in future,” Dean starts, steps away and around the sofa, “leave me out of your wonderings, okay?”

He leaves with the curious feeling of Crowley being more unsettled than entertained.

  


~

  


He leans heavy against the Impala door, slivers of his skin pressing against the heated metal.

It's scorched-Earth hot, heat rolling in waves off the asphalt. The sun beats down against his bare arms, the back of his neck, and Dean feels entirely comfortable.

Sam strolls, loose-limbed, out of the barely-standing shack of a gas station, dragging his forearm across his forehead and squinting at Dean like he's just about done with Texas already. He pulls thick swallows out of a brand new bottle of cold water until it's exactly half empty and then offers Dean the rest.

Dean shakes his head slowly, feels melted into some languorous shape like he's getting structure-less in this weather, spending all his time north of here where it rains too much.

Route 84 splits and stretches out to the horizon each way from where his boots are planted in the dust. His heart beats for the road and out here there’s miles of it, endless open skies and sweat making Sam’s hair curl damp.

“Changed my mind,” Dean says and holds out a hand.

Sam tosses him the bottle and rolls his eyes like Dean’s just _typical_ and Dean feels his lips tug into a half-smile.

In these past weeks of casting about lost and volatile, the gentle pleasure of freedom is a sensory shock to his system. There’s a sureness settling on him that’s been missing for so long that its loss had turned into numbness. Out here, just them and the black like it’s always been, Sam’s burning in the heat, brighter than ever under the sun, and Dean’s thawed by it, starting to cook all the way through.

He imagines what it’d take to get Sam to burn this bright everywhere.

“We gonna get this show on the road? Got an appointment with a demon,” Sam says, watching Dean drink, swallowing with him.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean tells him oh-so-obliging and sweet. “Anything you want, Sammy.”

Dean licks up the water clinging to his bottom lip and watches Sam burn and burn.

  


~

  


“I am legion! I have armies at my disposal—”

Dean backhands the dude across the mouth.

Sam pulls a face, unimpressed. “Ego much?”

Six days tracking this thing across the southern states and he's snug up inside a Stevie Ray Vaughan impersonator. They'd found him murdering the riffs of Texas Flood in a bar with sawdust on the floor and half the tables stacked with chairs for the night. Dean had put a quarter in the jukebox and drowned him out with the real thing.

Sam had thought it was pretty funny, smirking around his bitten tongue, trying to act serious.

“I'm a general, don't presume to know me, _boy_!”

Boy King, they'd called Dean's brother once. The Boy King of Hell.

Sam purses his mouth. “Forneus, master of—no, wait, I should say _marquis_ of rhetoric. A marquis isn't a general, it's nepotism.”

Forneus stares up between them from his chair, black-eyed and murderous, the whole image tempered by the fact he's managed to keep his Stetson on this whole time.

“Abaddon's spin doctor,” Sam adds lightly.

The demon glares, sighs, then shrugs. He rolls his eyes and drops the act, threatening to irritated in a second, heavy accent creeping into his voice. “Coulda let me finish my set.”

“There's a special place in Hell for what you were doing to Stevie Ray back there,” Dean drawls.

“Says the tone-deaf Dean Winchester,” Forneus snarks back and Sam does laugh then, a surprised snort; the little bastard. Then Forneus' eyes go dark, he smirks cruelly. “But wait. If I remember correctly, you do scream real tuneful.”

Every bit of humor vanishes with the feel of Sam tensing beside him, Sam's laugh sucked up back inside his chest, and Dean's on Forneus before he feels the press of his own knee between spread thighs. His hand curls around the back of Forenus' neck and the knife in he's holding presses through skin like parting dough, carving up a neat line of blood just short of the jugular.

Sam's voice is a warning, dull echo off the lumber walls. “Dean.”

“I'll be careful, Sammy,” Dean reassures softly; that voice again, obliging, too sweet to be talking to Sam like that, and it only bothers him in that he can't pin down what's driving him right now, weird inside-outside kind of mania like a sunstroke fever.

The demon speaks tightly, trembling against Dean's weight on him. “Come on! You think I'm stupid enough to cough up what you're after?”

Dean says nothing, waits patiently for Sam in a way he hasn't in a long time. He stays absolutely still, knife half-buried.

Sam steps around the devil's trap and into Dean's peripheral vision. He's tall, towering above Dean and the demon, and Dean feels him thrum with energy, a chemical chaos so smothered down Sam's hardly aware of it anymore. But Dean _sees_ it now, clearly for first time ever, and he's starting to get it; the thing Crowley's unsettled by.

“If Abaddon finds out you've spent some time in me and my brother's company, it won't matter if you told us jack shit, she'll skin you alive anyway,” Sam reasons.

Forneus' nostrils flare. He breathes a shuddering breath and skips his eyes between Sam and Dean, Dean and Sam, calculating his next play. Dean knocks his hat off just to be a dick, fists a hand in his lank hair and stops his wavering, makes him _look_ at Sam.

Dean looks too, cocks his head over his shoulder, and Sam's watching him right back, tense and unsure and—something, something dark, something Dean's only ever seen fragments of _._

His own perception is through the roof, climbing high ever since Cain put this thing inside him, and Sam sits like a tangible presence against it, Forneus’ blood on Dean’s hands just amplifying the sensation.

“We can give you a quick death,” Sam says levelly, after the odd game of staring. “Or we can leave you tied up with a little note for Abaddon. Might even stick a bow on you.”

“I'd heard you were gonna be a lawyer, Sam,” Forneus says through gritted teeth. “Little birdie told me you couldn't even talk your brother's soul out of the pit, but—” Dean hand twitches and the knife grates through skin. “They sold you short.”

Dean knows Sam hates it when people put the words _Dean_ and _Hell_ in all their variations together in the same sentence. He hates it now just as much as he hated it five years ago, as much as he'll hate it as long as he lives and every aeon after that. It's an endless cycle of guilt and failure and anger for him, a half-tapped reserve of pitch-black fuel for burning.

Sam's jaw tics, mouth tight. “And I heard you were the smartest man in Abaddon's campaign. Gotta admit, I'm disappointed.”

“Well, if that's true then, by your _own_ definition, the information I have to betray is real valuable. _I'm_ real valuable.” Forneus lets that sit a second. “She could be tracking me down even as we chit-chat.”

“And let me guess, you have an alternative that keeps us all happy?” Sam asks dryly.

“Maybe I do. I give you a little info for your trouble, we quickly part ways, you put me back where you found me, nobody ever finds out about this little _tête_ -à- _tête.”_

Sam pretends to consider it. “Or my brother could show you what he learned from your best and brightest in Hell.”

Pleasure streaks Dean's insides, curls around his ribs. The mark throbs in time with his heart like the two are wired and Sam swallows minutely and visibly strains to _not_ look at Dean.

They whip it out sometimes, this one threat that gets plenty of demons sobbing before they've even screwed the cap off the holy water. Feels different this time though and Dean doesn't know if it's just the way he feels different about everything these days or if it’s all Sam; Sam who’s flushed pink like exertion and breathing uneven and that—that's _never_ happened before. He doesn't know if Sam's even aware of it, just that a part of him is.

Forneus proceeds to lose his shit and Sam wasn't kidding when he said the guy was notoriously self-aggrandizing.

“You fuckers will burn if you do! She'll put my pieces back together and hunt you down to the edges of the Earth for touching me!” He spits and thrashes under Dean, chair rocking against the floorboards and Dean has to steady them with a boot on the ground, leaning heavy with his elbow on Forneus' shoulder.

“Think it's his music skills she loves so much?” Dean jerkily asks Sam.

Sam smirks. “Can't be his personality.”

“I'm her best! She's probably be out there combing the state for me as we speak and when she finds us—“

Dean cuts him off, “Yeah, yeah, we'll have ourselves a barn dance.”

Forneus fumes, all red and puffed up like he's full of steam. He yanks his head out of Dean's grip, turns to Sam, lowers his voice and speaks every word like a precision strike.

“You think this dog's loyal to you, kid? Not your daddy? Or Alistair? Hell, I hear are own grandpa of murder marked your brother up for himself, too. He's always been everyone else's bitch, _Sammy_.”

Sam. Sam _burns._ And Dean throws the knife aside and sees nothing but red. Red spurts of blood. A hacking gurgle, slick sound of wet choking, like music—

Dean hears his own voice rumble, “I'll teach you to carry a tune, too.”

“Dean!”

He comes back to himself, dragged up from—wherever it was he just went. Dean looks down at his hand resting gently over Forneus' throat. Pink-tinged spit and bits of windpipe cover the guy's chin, slathered around his mouth, and his chest heaves as he coughs up clots and gulps down air and tries to do both at the same time.

Dean feels like he's touched a live wire. Ears ringing. Skin rippling.

And then Sam's hand fists the back of his shirt, jarring as hell.

He lets Sam drag him out of the devil's trap and across the room, hand digging in his shoulder, and he _yields_ helplessly to Sam's touch— _hard-wired, hard-wired for this—_

“What the hellwas that?” Sam hisses.

“You,” Dean says—blurts, actually, no forethought at all so he knows it's the truth. “It was you, you wanted—” Dean's shaking, feels pumped full of adrenaline and the sense of Sam crawling over him _everywhere_. “You wanted me to punish him and I did.”

Sam's horrified. His mouth opens and closes, helpless frown turning him stricken, and Dean jumps to fill his silence with something to snap him out of it because Forneus is recovering and he can't see Sam like this.

Dean puts a hand to Sam's chest. “Cain could control demons and it obviously comes with the mark, that's all.”

“ _I_ could control demons,” Sam spits, the implication clear _._

He doesn't touch the other remark but Dean can feel his brother's heart thundering against his palm, the life of him, the potential. Sam's angry—angry at Dean, angry at Forneus, angry at the world—but he's so ripe too, finally ready. Not like years ago with all those sons' of bitches trying to turn him into something he wasn't; Azazel, Ruby, Lucifer. None of them stood a chance because none of them were Dean.

“You still could,” he murmurs quietly, taking half a step further into Sam's space. He looks up, watches Sam's face twist.

Forneus coughs and splutters and Sam shutters down completely, steps away from Dean slowly and turns to the demon and looks all business except for the shaking in his hands.

“Ready to talk?”

Forneus takes a cringing, flickering look at Dean; terrified, he's terrified. His mouth can barely make vowels around the trembling. “What is he?”

“You're not asking the questions here.”

He nods in eerie, silent acceptance, and asks through his mess of a windpipe, “And you'll kill me quickly?”

Sam promises and keeps it, ending it himself with Ruby's knife, and Dean folds his arms and thinks: one day soon, he's gonna melt that thing down and turn it into a bottle opener.

One day soon, Sam's not gonna need it.

  


~

  


“I'm gonna—“ Sam's throat sounds tight. He sits in the passenger seat with his hands in his lap, staring ahead, nothing but trees and dirt road. “I'm gonna pretend that you didn't say any of that.”

Dean cringes, “Sam,” but Sam shakes his head, word _no_ punched out of him on a breath.

“No, I _have_ to. I have to pretend you didn't say that.”

The sun's all but down, silver sliver of light on the horizon between the trees, everything golden-grey, cooling right down.

But Dean's blood runs red hot.

  


~

  


He doesn't wanna go back to the bunker.

Sam does.

They don't argue about it much; Sam's got fatigue from the almighty treason Dean slapped him with and Dean supposes he needs some time to obsess over it like he does everything else. And Dean—well, he wasn't exactly prepared for that either. Like getting sucker punched by everything he thought he knew; a rapidly spiralling relativity that keeps slipping out of his grasp. Slipping or, or he's letting it go, letting it trickle through his fingers inch by inch. He just doesn't fucking know anymore.

Outside of the moment he loses that certainty, can't entirely commit to the slippery slope.

So Dean drives west and Sam jacks a car and heads north and they smile stiffly like there's not a single thing wrong with that.

It doesn't help like he thought it might. There's a cold spot at his shoulder, too much empty space. They do this, sometimes; get sick of each other and attempt some distance like they're perfectly healthy and independent adults, like they don't both spend the entire time on edge, checking phones, acting like anxious fucking parents.

Dean supposes they're both just stubborn bastards who like to repeat their mistakes.

He calls Cas and shoots the shit with him. Doesn't much feel like spending time up to his elbows in halos and wings and Cas' too-knowing eyes so he takes the I-40 until he hits New Mexico and gets blissfully wasted drinking absurd amounts of tequila with a bunch of bikers from Santa Fe until he can't walk straight.

Somehow he doesn't get robbed and he celebrates by calling Sam and telling his voicemail, “Can't keep pretending shit ain't happening, Sam. You—yousssstarted it. You _asked_ me _, fuck_ , _”_ and hangs the hell up before he can finish that sentence, feels like he's going out of his mind because they've never talked about Ionia before, never even acknowledged it.

Next day three demons come for him at a crappy nowhere rest stop that's nothing more than an unattended pair of bathroom stalls.

Two of them pin him to the Impala hood by his arms and one comes at him with a knife, slip of a kid, can't be more than eighteen with his Tucumcari high school sweater. He leans over Dean with a gleeful, sharp-toothed grin and if Dean focuses hard enough, past his panic and the raging hangover, he can see a thin sheet of shimmering black twisting just underneath the kid's skin like oil on water.

The air does a juddering shiver around him and he can see their faces, the real ones; eyeless holes with maimed sockets and smoking sulphur-pit mouths gaping too wide. Bile rises in his throat and he swallows it back down, a couple of calming breaths before he tries to _unsee_ the ugly with limited, flickering success.

Out of the blue, Dean just keep blindly stumbling into these bizarre hidden realities that seethe silently just below his own, dipping in and out of a world that he's still only half aware of. It's disconcerting, literally, as Hell.

“Eli,” he grits out and the kid reels back, lust for Dean's guts spilling on the floor turned to fear.

The other two let him go; two women, one wearing a big-ass bow in her hair and the other clad head to toe in denim and tie-dye and when did demons get so fucking bizarro about their vessels? It's like some kinda contest over who can find the worst-dressed human to possess.

Eli's wearing short shorts and Dean sits on the hood and scrubs his unsteady hands over his face, really not in the mood to throw-down with a demon in short shorts.

They stand in a loose semi-circle around him like they're not sure where to go from here. Or Dean's—he's keeping them there somehow, he doesn't know, he just _doesn't know._ His insides break up and twist into new shapes and he might actually vomit any minute now.

Dean's got no idea how long he sits there with his head in his hands but eventually his heart slows to a calm and steady thud and in the end it's just like mastering fear the first time he aimed a weapon at a monster. Mastering a brand new sense. If he concentrates, Dean can navigate them, part their flesh and muscle and bone and carefully feel his way to that energy-well inside. It's a muscle he didn't know he had, a satisfying flex and stretch of something uncurling after years dormant.

He wonders if this is how it felt for Sam.

A couple days ago Dean tore out a demon's throat like it was nothing, but now he struggles to find that kind of power again. It doesn't click like before and he makes a mess of them, too much blood, too visceral for his sick stomach.

He doesn't even think about retrieving the knife from the car.

It takes a full hour for him to regain the energy to salt and burn the kids' bodies and set the whole damn place to the torch, blood streaked everywhere and bodies piled in the restroom.

He drives a mile and then blacks out, vision swimming with a slick dark, a terrible, thrilling sense of being _other_ before it retracts and he's just exhausted and aching, smelling like smoke.

  


~

  


He attempts to cure his headache with beer chased down with whiskey and it takes two bottles of Jack to get him even tipsy, whatever he tapped into at that rest stop fucking him over in the most miserable way possible.

“What're you, a robot or something?” the woman behind the bar—Fiona, her name's Fiona—asks him, warm and amused and polishing a glass with a rag.

Dean scoffs. “Somethin' like that.”

“I've seen guys get through some liquor but holy shit. You'd sure be an expensive date,” she drawls, lovely rough voice that shows her years. Dean tips his head down and she hums. “I get it. Got a missus at home, right?”

“Uh—yeah. Partner.”

There's a tortured pause and then, “ _Oh_.”

He cringes and doesn't look at her, just tightens his hand around his glass and wonders what the hell he thinks he's going on about. The liquid inside ripples and all he wants to do is tear up the distance between here and Lebanon without even looking at a single fucking rest stop.

“I gotta go make a—a phone call, thanks for the—“ He waves his hand at the whiskey and turns on his heel, pulling his phone out of his pocket and dialling Sam.

His brother picks up on the second ring and Dean's headache turns to dust and scatters to the wind.

  


~

  


They track the next demon to Georgia.

Dean considers not telling Sam about the rest stop but the thought twists his stomach into sickly knots. It feels _abhorrent_ all of a sudden, to even think about lying to his brother.

“What, you couldn't tell me about the angel you put in me but _this_ , this is hunky dory?” Sam shouts, pacing back and forth between his bed and the motel room door—every time he gets close to the fucking thing Dean cringes.

“You were mad about the lying! So, I'm changing my attitude.” Dean sits at the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees. He grips his hands together and tries to ride out the feeling of his skin pulling after Sam like it’s trying to yank itself off his body.

Sam's steps falter. “You—your attitude? Demonic possession isn't attitude, Dean. This?” Sam waves a hand at him. “What's going on with you right now? This is not just you having an attitude problem. Your attitude problem is all I _wish_ this was.”

“Would you chill, I'm not possessed. And I got plenty of attitude, thanks,” Dean jokes but it's desperate and all it does is piss Sam off more.

“You got plenty of demonic juice up inside you. You've got a serious problem. That's what you've got.”

Dean starts with an edge and a sneer, “Aww, Sammy, didn't know you cared,“ but he's shoved back into the mattress before he can finish, immediate horizon full of furious hazel eyes and Sam's mouth all pink and open. Sam's knee between Dean's thighs and one huge hand spread against his chest.

First thing Dean does is arch into it, some immediate wanton impulse he can't control, that flesh-pull, and his dick presses into Sam's thigh and Sam shoves him harder even though there's nowhere to go.

“If you give me that one more time, Dean,” Sam growls right in his face, Dean spreading for him, every instinct forcing him open for his brother. "If you honestly think for one second that I don't—“

Sam looks very quickly aware of what he's doing: pinning Dean into the bed, hulking over him.

“Don't,” Dean breathes and reaches up, fists a hand in Sam's shirt; means _don't go, don't move away, don't—what? What were you gonna say?_

He honestly doesn't know what Sam's gonna do. His face is a chaos of expressions, wearing all those things he keeps bottling up right there in his skin. Can't keep his guard up this close to Dean, his brother's legs spread for him like this, and Dean knows these things like he's feeling them himself because Sam's bleeding emotions like a fatal wound and Dean's soaking up every single one.

He uncurls his fist, palms over the ridges of Sam's ribs greedily, Sam's chest shuddering with every breath he drags in. He's solid and close and so, _so_ hot and Dean's going honest-to-God crazy, synapses firing like lightning, the mark throbbing and shivers of sensation spreading out of it like ripples.

“After everything we've been through,” Sam half-whispers, voice a wreck. “You don't think I don't care.”

He doesn't plan on saying it, it just slips out, soft and desperate, “You did, you thought I didn't care. Damn near almost died over it.”

Sam puts no space between them. “That where you're heading?”

“Doesn't have to be.” The words feel heavy and slurred in his mouth like he's drunk, dark and tempting like good liquor. “Where I'm heading, we could go together.”

Sam's face collapses, his head falls forward, forehead pressing against Dean's collarbone. “You have to _stop_ , Dean.” He feels the words vibrate under his skin, a warning he just can't fucking abide.

He buries his fingers in Sam's hair, scratches Sam's scalp and makes him a long line of shivering skin, makes his breath hitch and purr. Then he makes a fist and pulls roughly, dragging Sam into his eyeline, Sam's eyes all swallowed up dark and that's a real sight.

Dean asks, “Why?”

Sam huffs his frustration into Dean's face, teeth almost bared; furious because Sam _wants—_ always, has _always_ wanted—and Dean wants to give it to him, whatever it is.

Sam yanks himself back violently like Dean's magnetic, stands so fucking tall above Dean's splayed body. He heaves a breath, chest puffing, his hair a roughed-up mess Dean's fingers itch to push back into. He looks down at Dean like he could eat him alive and he could, Dean knows he could, knows he's thinking about it.

Then he walks away.

Walks away and doesn't answer Dean's question because he can't.

  


~

  


Crowley's fingers knead in Dean’s shoulders.

He tells the counter waitress, “I'll have what he's having,” and she sets up another cup and fills it with coffee.

He leans low over Dean and Dean shivers and cringes, pushes into it and tries to get away. “Get off'a me.” But Crowley pulls a low moan out of him, hands working at the tense muscles.

Crowley laughs. “That's what I thought.” He takes a stool next to Dean, elbow against the counter. “To what do I owe this impromptu meeting?”

“We're getting closer to her.”

“Oh?”

“Demonic breadcrumb trail.”

“Yeah, I heard you and Moose were making the rounds through her head security. Curious how you manage to get the secrets spilling every time.”

Dean drinks his coffee and watches Crowley, tries to sense that same taint inside him like the others but it's deeper, carefully guarded. “Whatever works.”

“How many is it, Dean? How many have you sunk that inferior demon-killing knife of yours into?”

None.

None of them. Sam won't let him kill them. It's like he's terrified of handing Dean anything sharper than a pencil around a tied down demon these days. Not that Dean needs a weapon to cause damage. Not that Sam does either. But on they go, pretending, shuffling around the elephant in the room.

Dean's on edge, wound up tight. Wants to fight or fuck or, or something but he can't; Sam's got him trussed up every which way. Sam and his constantly grinding gears, no doubt mapping and remapping his definition of Dean over and over in his head.

Crowley drops his voice, says, “Imagine what the real thing will feel like,” and spit floods Dean's mouth.

He swallows it down, throat clicking. “Yeah, well you better be ready to pony up soon.”

“Oh, I'm ready to _pony up,_ ” Crowley echoes. “Been too long from my throne, thanks.”

“Your throne, huh?”

Crowley shifts with an uneasy frown. He speaks carelessly, forgetting himself, those emotions of his becoming more unleashed every time he shoots up. Even if Dean couldn't get him with the first blade, Crowley wouldn’t last two minutes in the game like this.

“Yes, _my_ throne, who the fuck else's throne would it be?”

Dean files that away.

“No idea what you're talkin' about, Crowley,” he says lightly. “I said I was gonna kill you, didn't I?”

“And I said you couldn't.”

“You seem pretty cocky about that.”

He gives Dean a grin that's downright manic, makes him look at least eighty percent crazy. “A knight needs a king, Dean.”

Dean feels his eyebrows disappear somewhere into his hair. “You think I'm your knight?”

“Why not? You want to murder demons, I want more capable staff. You and your brother couldn't close the gates but that doesn't mean we can't put some rules in place and end an eternity of needless chaos.”

“Ever the politician, huh?”

Crowley rolls his eyes. “Please. I was born for this.”

Dean scoffs because that right there is fucking _funny_.

He drains the last of his coffee and stands. “Just try not to get murdered by Abaddon until I get the blade, okay? We keep pissin' her off and she's not the kinda gal who takes this stuff lying down.”

He grabs his jacket, doesn't put it on because the night's balmy and Dean likes the feel of it on his bare arms.

“Why? So I can save myself for you?” Crowley asks dryly and Dean shrugs, backing up towards the door.

“Maybe we'll see what you're made of after all.”

Dean knows it ain't ruling, that's for sure. Crowley was born a tailor with a size complex and liver failure killed him before the hellhounds could. His rein is through and he’s good and scared and Dean’s pretty sure he knows what of.

  


~

  


In Forrest City, they hunt the nastiest son of a bitch shapeshifter Dean's ever seen. Because Sam finally snapped and demanded they needed a break and this is their idea of a vacation.

It was born and raised in the wild, shifting from animal to human to some hybrid in-between monster. It's vicious and feral and when they track it down, it's got its teeth buried in the twitching body of a missing local boy; just eleven years old and there's more blood on the moss and grass and knotted nearby tree roots than inside him.

Dean used to have a thing about the kids.

He knows all about shattered innocence, used to feel bruised around the heart for days when there was a kid involved. He looks at the dead kid now and sees just another casualty of a war they don't have the time or resources to fight anymore when there's always a bigger fish to fry.

But Sam. Sam looks like he always does lately, like maybe it should've been him under that tree; scares Dean to death, that look.

Thing is, it's not like don't do all this for a good reason. It's easy to forget in the ever-mounting pile of crap but saving people, it's still the mission, the reason why he keeps the knives sharp and the car fuelled. But by the time Sam was ready to run headlong into a burning building in the name of revenge at the tender age of twenty-three, Dean was already one-hundred-percent over the assumption that Sam still largely operates under: that it's _the_ most important thing. And he's stubborn like that, Sam. Just like Dad.

There's things worth dying for and strangers, even kids _,_ just don't rank high on Dean's list like they might've done once. Sam may not think his own life means more than theirs but Dean will argue Sam to the grave about some things—like peanuts tasting better with chocolate and the cultural importance of tapes—and this is one of them.

The shifter's crouched in blood with its back hunched. Skinny. Sickly-colored greying skin and elongated fingers with claws like needles. It tears at flesh and sinew so loud they can hear its teeth gnashing twenty feet away, stock still and silent from where they're stood shoulder to shoulder.

Dean nudges a staring Sam—his top lip curled in morbid horror—until he eases the crossbow from a strap on his shoulder and carefully lowers it to the ground. He's slow and graceful, the way he curls his height forward and draws back the wire. The way he stretches upright, crossbow tucked into his shoulder.

Sam holds out a palm and Dean fingers the silver bolt tip until it pricks him before he hands it over, rolls and presses the warm metal into Sam's hand slowly, fingertips rubbing against rough skin. Sam's breath shudders so quietly Dean feels hypersensitive, attuned to such a small thing. It takes Sam seconds to pull away and load the bolt, eyes focused on the shifter but Dean can _feel_ Sam's mental focus like a tangible thing.

It's probably those seconds, Dean muses, that fucks them over.

The thing jerks, whippet-thin and fast, and Sam fires the bolt but it misses by inches because the shifter's lunging across the forest floor, gangly arms and legs scrabbling in the leaves and dirt, a twitching, shambolic crawl that's as fast as any wild animal and visually arresting in a way that's really fucking alien.

It opens its jaw unnaturally wide and makes a sound like a shriek but pulled inwards, its beady eyes picking Dean because he's smaller than Sam and this thing is a clever predator.

“Dean!”

And Dean's world suddenly upends. His bottom lip stings like he just took something sharp to the face and his shoulder throbs, the ground jarringly solid at his back. He uses the momentum of his fall to roll over and up onto his hands and knees because Sam—where's Sam; stupid son of a bitch knocked right into him and took a set of claws to the stomach for his trouble.

Dean does a runner's start, skids in the leaves to Sam's side and drops, hands pulling at his brother's shirt.

Sam gasps, “It's shallow, help me up,” and Dean grips his hand and heaves Sam off the ground while the shifter rips through the trees and shrubs around them like it's doing laps, circling them in.

Dean keeps a hold on Sam's elbow, Sam listing to one side as he re-traps the wire. He tries to hand the crossbow over but Dean shakes his head and shoves it back.

“You're better with it,” he says sharply, trying to follow the path of the shifter, fucking thing too quick for him to get an eye on.

“I don't know if I can brace it.”

“You can.” Dean sees it kick up forest debris in the dirt forty feet away like it's preparing to charge and slaps a bolt into Sam's hand. “I got you.”

Sam _reacts_ to that, pupils dilating, mouth parting, and Dean would hang around to watch the lit expression on Sam's face—he really fucking wants to—but there's a monster eyeing them up like its next meal. Dean puts himself at Sam's right shoulder to brace him for the recoil, palming the base of his spine, damp with sweat.

Sam aims.

The thing's feet toss up clouds of dust and leaves.

Dean feels his heartbeat knock against Sam's ribs, a rapid thump trying to punch through bones like they're uncalled-for barriers.

A silver bolt sticks straight through the shifter's eye, stopping it so sudden it's comical the way its legs fly out from under it. The sound of its body slapping into the ground echoes through the trees, dull and final, and then all Dean can hear is the sound of their ragged breath and a few stray bird calls hundreds of yards away.

Seconds pass because they're too savvy these days _not_ to think the shifter might get back up and keep trying to chow down, but it doesn't, and Dean looses a smooth sigh from his pursed lips against Sam's neck and watches his skin prick up into bumps.

He doesn't wanna move away or stop touching his brother so he doesn't, the palm at the base of Sam's spine tingling like all the times Dean's licked batteries to goad Sam into doing it too.

Sam turns his head just a few inches, angled down to make them almost eye-level. He breathes, “Thanks,” and Dean _tastes_ it.

“Right back at you.”

He feels blood run hot down his chin from his split lip and sees Sam's eyes follow it, feels Sam's whole body tense against him like he might bolt.

“S'just blood, Sammy,” Dean mutters softly, a little slurred. “Nothin' to be afraid of.”

The moment stretches out, thick and warm, earthy smell of the forest and sharper tang of Sam's adrenaline that Dean's got a real scent for now. Sam turns into him, muscles in his shoulder slowly shifting as he raises a hand to Dean's face. He swipes a thumb under Dean's lip and catches a slick of bright red and they both stare at it, at Sam's shaking hand between them.

Then Sam grunts, same hand gripping his stomach, and Dean doesn't get to ask the thing trying to tear its way out of his throat for weeks now: _Can you actually feel it? Tell me I'm not going crazy here—_

Dean quickly drags Sam's arm over his shoulder to take his weight, tension broken but still there, detached and diffuse in the air, following all the way back to the forest edge.

He props Sam against the car and finds himself laughing, Sam looking at him with an eyebrow raised, face cracking like he might want to laugh too.

“You were right, Sammy,” Dean says through a grin. “This was a good idea.”

“Pretty awesome, huh?” Sam adds, so damn glowing in the sun, leaning on the Impala and bleeding and roughed up. Dean's brother, Dean's—something. Everything.

He's flooded to bursting with a sudden devotion, an adoration so strong it nearly knocks him on his ass. It's familiar but overwhelming, all at once and too much. He's always known he'd die for Sam, kill for Sam, do _anything_ for Sam even before Sam said _give it to me,_ but right now he could fall to his knees and start singing or something crazy like that, make himself a John Cusack character in a cheesy movie.

“You okay?” Sam asks.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says breathlessly. “I'm good, really good.”

And Sam's focus is on Dean like a lazer, like he _knows_. Like that line Dean feels hooked into Sam's center works both ways after all. He looks dangerously alive, his thumb still stained with Dean's blood.

He brings it up slowly, rubbing the pad against his stubble, and for just a few fascinated seconds he watches Dean's eyes go wide with a curiosity so dark it makes Dean's spine zing.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Taylorville's a wrecked-up ghost town until the woman comes out of nowhere. Dean hits the breaks but it's too late.

“Shit!”

“Dean, wait—”

He's got a hand on the door handle but Sam's got a hand on him. “What?”

“Just,” is all Dean gets from him but Sam's intent, staring down the Impala hood and sure enough, the woman Dean just rammed his bumper into gets up, slams both her hands down on the car and screeches.

She's black-eyed and crazy and she scratches her blue-polished nails into the paintwork. Dean sticks the car in reverse and skids it out from under her but she lurches after them, screaming and frothing and Dean can't get any kind of read on her past a shrieking static fog of agony.

Dean's never seen a demon like this outside of the pit. “She's one of Abaddon's.”

“How do you know?”

“She's—that's what they're like, fresh turned, they're wild, outta control.”

He knows this because he was the final nail in the coffin for plenty himself, saw the moment when they snapped and the human color left their eyes.

Sam pulls the knife out of the glove compartment and asks, “You think they destroyed the entire town?” and Dean twists in his seat trying to find her.

“Maybe? I dunno, there's gotta be some people alive somewhere.”

The buildings look ransacked, store windows smashed, metal and glass and paper covering the sidewalk.

He thinks Bobby would have called all hands on deck for this one, once upon a time.

Something smacks into the passenger window, a pair of bloodied fists, and then another something into the driver's side, an elbow. They're surrounded, a half-dozen demons literally out of the ether, all trying to claw their way inside the Impala with their bare hands.

They holler inside Dean's head and he _can't_. Can't push them out, doesn't know how. Their pain suffocates him, makes the mark sting like a million papercuts, and he wants to beg for Sam to make them stop because Sam could—Sam could make them shut up, not even Abaddon could but Sam—

“S-Sammy—”

“Nonono, Dean, stay with me—”

Something, somewhere, snaps.

“ _Dean_!”

He feels bone cracking against his fists, hot blood clinging to his chin. A shadow choking him, all the sun blocked out and bodies everywhere, closing in, cold fingers pulling at him from every direction but he still can't stop the methodical slog of his fists.

“Get back! Get away from him.”

Sam's voice echoing, a bone-deep resonance that's not natural, not one bit.

Dean's out on the road, somehow ten feet from the car and straddling a twitching body with a shattered hole where its face used to be. His hands and shoulders ache and his blood thrums like he's mainlined adrenaline.

There's something like twenty demons now, all in a loose circle with him at the center and Sam beside him.

Sam keeping them back.

He hunches down next to Dean like twenty rabid demons aren't even a concern and Dean turns his head, shaking now, coming down from his fucking blackout with a crash. He makes a lame attempt to grab Sam's shirt but can't, hand too uncoordinated, and Sam meets him halfway instead, gripping Dean's trembling fist in his own.

“Sammy.”

“Can't let 'em get inside you,” Sam says roughly and Dean shakes his heavy head. “Get up, Dean. Come on.”

Sam helps haul him to his feet, keeping one hand on him the whole time, circling his wrist, gripping his elbow, secure around his arm.

When he can form words, Sam staring the whole fucking time, unfathomable look on his face, Dean asks, “What're you gonna do with them?” and Sam takes a look around the circle, all dumbstruck the way they stand gawping at him like they're waiting for his verdict.

He squeezes his eyes shut and clutches his head and it reminds Dean of his visions, back when he was scared of what Sam could do.

“Oh, God.”

“Sam.” Dean does successfully grab his brother this time, fists a hand in his shirt and drags him closer. “Hey.” Sam looks at him. “I'm gonna end it, okay? Nothin' we can do for them now except end it.”

“Okay.”

“Not with the knife.” Sam grits his teeth and nods but it's not enough. “That what you want me to do? Ask, Sam, you gotta—I want you to _ask_.”

“ _Why_?” Sam asks desperately, fingers twisting in Dean's jacket; still clutching at each other like it's the end of the world.

“Because I don't wanna, not without you, this—it's gotta be together.”

He doesn't know how long he watches Sam thinking his brain dry, maybe just seconds even, time getting all warped, but what Sam's projecting so vividly is white-hot and thrilling, the kind of anticipation that makes Dean's mouth dry. The fact Sam's still holding the demons with nothing more than his own raw mojo is a dizzying realization.

“Do it,” Sam says tightly and Dean swallows a groan.

They stand stock-still while he puts them down, every one of them with a touch to the heart, trying to be careful for Sam, show Sam he _can_ control this. It's not like the other times, frantic and messy. The mark pulses like a steady heartbeat instead of an untameable force; cool calm in his head but fire where Sam stands at his back. And Dean right in the middle, Sam's permission balancing the scales.

When the last one falls, Sam stumbles to the car and sags against it, white-knuckled grip on the roof. When Dean steps closer he holds up a hand like he doesn't want Dean to touch him.

Dean throws out his hands. “Dude, really?”

“Just gimmie a minute, okay?”

“You gotta headache?”

Sam's struggling lungs tells him _yeah_. He's gone pale like he's getting actually drained and Dean thinks for a wild, twisting second of opening up a vein right here in the road, offering himself up to Sam straight-out. It's a reckless slip of a thought and Dean clamps it down; too far, too soon. He doesn't even know—Sam looks, Sam _wants,_ but Dean doesn't know for sure, Sam won't give him any more than Dean demands him to admit.

But he does know exactly what's happening to his brother right now. “What did you see, Sam?”

Sam groans, grinds out, “Others, in uh—Independence.”

“Uh, what now?”

“Kentucky,” Sam snaps. “There's another factory full of souls, another town that's gonna be destroyed if we don't get there fast.”

He flings open the door in a way that makes the hinges cringe and by extension, Dean. Sam grabs his wrist and hauls him to it, two more seconds and he's gonna stuff Dean inside face first.

“Okay, okay, would you calm down?”

With his fingers still wrapped around Dean's poor grinding bones, Sam growls right into his face, “If we can get to the souls, we can put them back where they belong,” and Dean turns his palm upwards and grips Sam right back.

He says slowly, “If we can get to the souls, means whatever you just saw saved 'em, Sammy,” and he thinks Sam might at least look afraid, unsure, _something,_ but he doesn't, not anything like it.

Sam's narrows his eyes and breathes through his nose and looks positively spoiling for a fight.

 

~

 

In Independence, Dean stands with demon blood dripping slick through his fingers and imagines a rough handle and a jagged set of teeth with pinpoint clarity. Violence beats through him, a shocking gratification making him loose and dangerously hungry.

When Sam smashes the jars, Dean watches his brother, not the souls. Watches with the kind of crazed, unquenchable yearning that could make a man put a bullet in his head.

Fighting, killing, blood and brains on the basement floor, it cycles around and around, relief and then longing, over and over. Taking and dishing out a pretty thorough beating has done plenty to calm Dean’s bloodlust but fuck all to soothe the itch of wanting Sam.

The souls were guarded by a—thankfully—small amount of demons just strong enough to wriggle out of Dean's admittedly rookie ability to pin them down and Dean feels blue with bruises, Sam bleeding bad from a couple of nasty gashes. If they're gonna take on a whole army of these dicks, they're gonna need a way better arsenal.

He watches Sam watch the souls, burning bright in his brother's determined eyes, and thinks Sam's coming to terms with that at least.

 

~

 

“Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“You tired?”

He chews over the possibility of lying and instantly discards the idea. “Not really.” Dean rolls onto his front and props himself up on his elbows, tries to see Sam through the weak light leaking its way through the splits in the motel curtains. “What's up?”

It's so silent he can hear the soft pull of Sam's lips parting, sound of it making Dean's chest ache. He squeezes his eyes shut and grips the pillow and thinks he can't take much more of this.

“On a scale of one to ten, how much do you hate Kentucky?”

It's absolutely not what he was expecting Sam to say and he snorts an undignified laugh, tension through his spine easing; of course—of _course_ Sam would know what to say to make that happen.

“Around a seven.”

“What was Tampa, again?”

“Dude, eleven, how could you forget that?”

Sam sounds like he's smirking when he says, “I dunno, man.”

“There was this—this barmaid in New Mexico,” Dean starts and it's just like any one of his hundreds of stories, Sam's heard 'em all over the years, but Dean _feels_ Sam go stiff and unhappy across the gap between the beds. He thinks if he could see in the dark, he'd see Sam close his eyes, maybe frown, tell Dean a million truths with just his face. “But uh—“ He takes a steadying breath like he's about to take a sudden plunge into an ice bath. “Couldn't do it.”

Silence and then, “Wow, that's gotta be a first for you, right?”

“Won't be the last.”

“Well, you are getting older,” Sam deadpans and Dean viciously hurls a spare pillow at him.

“Shut the fuck up, older.”

Sam's sniggering when he says, “I'm jus' sayin',” all sweet, drawling accent and it reminds him of home— _home_ home; teaching Sam to speak in Lawrence, right before Dad took them on the road. Sam was talking before he could walk because Dean'd started speaking again like he was making up for months without the sound of his own voice and Sam was the only living thing he ever felt much like talking to.

Remembering stuff like that should make him put this whole thing to rest, but it doesn't and Dean doesn't know if it's a testament to how fucked up he is or to how important this is.

“You know what I meant, bitch. Don't even act like you don’t.”

Sam audibly swallows. “What, total honesty? You and me?”

“Wanna try it?”

“You're implying that it bothers me when you hook up.”

“Turns out he's got half a brain after all.”

Sam doesn't cut the tension to insult him back, just asks in a hard voice, “Why would it bother me?”

“I know it does.”

“That's not an answer, Dean. Come on, honestly, why would it bother me who you sleep with?”

Sam asks it aggressively, like an accusation, like he just _knows_ Dean's gonna take the easy road and drop it. Dean curls his shaking hands into fists and slides them under the pillow where it's cool, rolls his shoulders like he's prepping for a fight.

“Because you've wanted to fuck me since you turned sixteen.”

Sam makes a noise like a whimper-sigh, helpless and hot, and the silence goes on and on, thick and overgrowing until Sam finally says, “We went years without bringing up this crap.”

“Yeah, and nothing's changed, you still wanna fuck me.”

“And what do _you_ want?” Sam throws back and Dean feels his dick throb against the mattress, the mark throb against his skin.

“I want—“ _Fuck,_ he wants to be able to breathe, that'd be a start. “I want you to just get over here and do it. _Anything._ ” He can hear Sam's breathing go shallow, the shift of the sheets on his bed. “I want it, Sam. God, I want it.”

“Dean.”

“I want you to see yourself how I see you. Do you even. I mean do you know what we could do?” He thinks, vaguely, he might be rambling. “We could wipe ‘em out, we just need to be stronger. You just need to take what's yours.”

“Dean, please, just shut the fuck up.” Sam sounds like he's choking because Dean means—he means exactly what Sam's so scared of; that when Dean talks about making Sam powerful, it's his own blood at the buffet table. "Please."

He can't shut up—physically can't. He needs to get the hell out of this room before he bulldozes right over all the groundwork they've laid. He rolls out of bed, finds his jeans and drags them on with his hands fumbling the zipper and buttons.

“Where are you going?” Sam demands, voice needfully breaking, sat bolt upright.

“Air.”

“Leave the keys.”

Dean hesitates, offended but ultimately guilty. He digs the keys out of his pocket and hands them over but Sam's got sneaky ulterior motives, swinging his bare legs over the side of the bed and catching Dean's fingers and pulling him forward a couple steps, inches from straight-up standing between his brother's spread thighs.

Sam whispers, soft as a breeze, “It bothers me.”

Dean can't fucking swallow. “Then I won't do it.”

It feels like tentative permission and Dean stumbles, helplessly, over the line Sam's opened up for crossing. He steps closer, sliding his hand into Sam's hair, every inch he's allowed like a shocking flood of bone-weakening heat just wrecking his entire structure. It slips between his fingers and Sam turns his head up and finally, Dean can see his bright eyes in the dark.

Looks like he's fucking burning, soldering Dean in place with a look.

“And Crowley, that bothers me too.” Dean sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and bites down; guilt, maybe. Caught out. “He makes you feel something, right? I'm not stupid, Dean. You wouldn't be sneaking around for nothing and I know, remember? I know what it's like.”

“Calm,” Dean chokes out. “He makes me feel calm. _Jesus_ —" He jerks and tenses, Sam blind-siding him with both hands curling into the waistband of his jeans, knuckles pressing warm against the bottom of his back.

Sam asks, “And me?” and presses into him, mouth opening against Dean's stomach, damp press of his lips over the thin material of Dean's t-shirt draining blood straight to his dick.

“ _Sammy._ “

“How do I make you feel, Dean?” The words vibrate under his skin, up through his spine.

“Powerful.”

“Yeah?” Sam flexes his fingers and Dean reacts the same, scratching against Sam's scalp, making him shiver, pressing him closer, that mouth of his.

Sam is way past implying it now, that Dean's at least halfway to demonic, and it's less of an acknowledgement of the indisputable mounting evidence, more like he _knows_ it. Just the look on his face like Dean's the fucking living embodiment of his worst weakness and now he's cracking after all the tense weeks of having a walking, talking temptation right beside him all day, every day.

Dean croaks, shot full of holes, “Thought you said shut the fuck up.”

“Half still want you to,” Sam murmurs into his body.

Dean's legs threaten to give way when Sam's tongue presses against him soft and dizzying and the little bastard huffs a laugh, knows exactly what he's doing. Dean's got this imagine in his head, very vivid, of him climbing right into his brother's lap and kissing him.

They've never kissed; dry-humped against a ratty sofa but never that.

“Tell me, tell me what the other half wants.”

Sam spit-soaks his shirt, mouthing obscene almost-kisses, and Dean's dick aches in his jeans, fucking straining to roll his hips but he won't until Sam answers. "Dean—"

And it's about to be a good answer, Dean can tell, but he doesn't get to hear it because his phone rings and Sam freaks the fuck out, jerking back like he's been viciously scalded and leaving a cooling wet patch of spit on Dean's t-shirt.

Sam stares at it, the place his mouth was, and Dean stares at Sam, leant back as far away as he can get, and then it hits Dean that nobody calls them this far past midnight if there isn't maiming involved and he stumbles around, trying to remember where he threw his damn phone.

Cas immediately asks down the line, “Dean?”

Dean forgets how to talk for a good five seconds.

“ _Dean_?”

“Yeah, yeah, Cas, what d'you want? It's—“ He checks his watch and sees his hand is shaking, Sam's fever-heat smoking a scorching trail across his nerves like hundreds of lit fuses. “Three in the morning.”

“I wouldn't call if it wasn't urgent.”

“Then, what?”

“Are you okay, Dean?”

He laughs; a dry, humorless cough of a thing. “Yeah.” Sam's looking at his hands like he can't believe where they were, licking his cotton-dried lips; Dean just cannot watch any of that. “Just peachy. That's your urgent thing? Checking up on us?”

It's not, and Cas gives him a set of coordinates and says the word urgent another six or so times. Dean tosses his phone to the bed, scrubs both hands over his face and tries not to focus too much on how Sam's still half-hard in his shorts when he slams the bathroom door shut hard enough to rattle the frame.

 

~

 

They pack up in the dark and that's fine, Dean's feeling a little too raw about the near miss to look at Sam for too long anyway.

Reality has finally sucker-punched him back to Earth. Because he really, _really_ wants his little brother to fuck him and he knew that, sure, but now he _knows_ it and he thinks it's probably gonna happen soon and it's messing with his better senses.

He gets them to the Murray Baker bridge before the sun really starts to creep up and by then Sam's napping against the door and Dean finally gets to unabashedly look at him in the cold light of day. He's a little pale; the last few days of demons and visions have taken their toll.

Dean thinks about his blood glossy on Sam's thumb, how Sam'd looked at it.

He typically obsesses over it until Sam finally wakes up. They're just a few minutes out of angel HQ and Sam's muzzy, scrubbing at his eyes with his sleeve, face scrunched up and looking all of five years old, and Dean switches to relentlessly calling him _d'aww little buddy_ until Sam elbows him in the diaphragm.

_It won't change anything._

That's what he believes. All the years, all the crap, and Dean will be damned—Sam too, let them both be truly Hell-bound—if they let this be the thing that changes them.

 

~

 

Sam stops Dean torturing Cas' angel prisoner like it's a principle thing, making up for what went down in that motel room like Sam can still cleanse his soul through good acts.

Wipe the incest slate clean, yeah, that's pretty freakin' hilarious.

It makes Dean crabby, like he's missed out on something, and he gets out into the hall feeling vaguely direction-less and frustrated.

“Well, he sucked,” he drawls, tipping his head back against the wall and trying to even out his breathing.

“No wonder he didn't make the cut, huh?”

A dull ache passes through Dean's forearm and he squeezes at it distractedly. “Cas is gonna be thrilled when he finds out about Heaven’s invisible, portable back door.”

Sam shrugs like he doesn't really give a rat's ass, or he's not listening, something like that. He's watching Dean rub his arm, thick silence piling up between them.

Until Sam says, “You're always playing with that thing,” like _that thing_ offends him.

Dean raises an eyebrow, his rootless irritation finding its anchor. “That bother you too?”

Sam flinches but recovers quick. “Should it?”

“I don't know what to tell you, Sam. It burns sometimes, mostly around you so—"

“Might'a known it'd be my fault.”

“Hey, man, I'm _just_ saying; it's the truth. I know you don't like it but it is what it is.”

“Who says I don't like it,” Sam fires back, wicked-sharp, and Dean supposes they're both suffering from Cas' badly timed cock-block.

“You're real hot and cold, Sammy,” Dean drawls.

“Isn't really a rule book for this kinda thing, _Dean_.”

“Yeah, no shit. I just—“ He stutters and finds his voice is soft when he goes on, “don't want you to be pissed off about it, that's all.”

“I'm not, I'm not pissed off.” Sam flinches again, scrubs a hand over his face. “Not about that anyway.”

They keep skirting this issue in ever-tightening circles and Sam's still seething under all that skin, it's not gonna go away just because Dean doesn't know how to deal with it.

“How many times, Sam, I'm not gonna apologize for saving your life, I don't know what you expect—"

“I don't want you to apologize for saving me. God, you're so—I want you to be sorry for letting me walk around possessed, doing God knows what, murdering our friends, and not telling me, not _warning_ me!”

“I am sorry!”

“So why didn't you?” Sam demands.

And Dean yells, actually yells, “Because I was scared!” and it rings out too loud in the cramped hall. He reels it back, shaking with the echo and going on anyway. “He said if I told you, you'd push him out and it'd kill you. I was scared that you actually wanted to die, man, and I didn't wanna hand you the Goddamn noose.”

“I already made the choice to live for you, but you didn't trust me to keep making it.”

“Would you have? Knowing there was an angel renting a room up there? All that crap you said to Death? Just sounded so fucking suicidal.”

“It's not suicide when you're already on life support, dipshit.”

“Yeah, well, in our world dead's pretty subjective,” Dean says, far harder than he means to. “And you've never let me jump off that ledge without kicking up all kinds of fuss.”

“Dean,” Sam says solemnly. “It's not the same. Being scared doesn't justify you doing shit _to me_ and not letting me in on the big secret.”

“I'm not saying it does.” Dean's voice cracks appallingly but he thinks Sam deserves to hear it. “I'm not, Sammy. I was scared and I fucked up.”

“I just need to know you understand that.”

He does, and it doesn't sit comfortable because he hasn't navigated the paradox of being sorry and not sorry at the same time yet. Carrying the bruising guilt and still looking his living, breathing brother in the eye every single day feeling sickeningly grateful to the angel whose heart he wants desperately to stick a blade into. It's a real headfuck.

“I know what I woulda done if it'd been you in that hospital bed instead of me.”

Christ, Dean seizes at that, whole space under his ribcage going cold. He thinks about all the ways Sam could tear him down, the worst things he could say. But Sam doesn't, because they're at ground zero and there's suddenly angels everywhere, more feathered cock-blocks, and whatever Sam would do, it's not for their ears. Dean's not even sure he's ready to hear it himself.

And then Crowley calls and it's about to go down and all Dean wants to do, for the first time in a while, is put some distance between him and his brother.

 

~

 

He finds out, later.

The first blade is good and rough in his palm, finally closing up the circuit; blade an extension of him, mark feeding energy into it, and Dean's not-so-human heart pumping lifeblood through those vital organs.

But suddenly Sam's voice is in his head. Sam is bright clarity punching through a mile-thick pile of rock.

_“Dean, you can stop.”_

Sam who's furious. Sam who's coming at him like a truck going seventy towards a startled rabbit.

The second Sam touches him, it's like Crowley and the blade aren't even in the room. All Dean's awareness of them evaporates with a physical _pop_ like his ears adjusting to a new pressure. Sam hauls him up off Abaddon's body and crowds him against the nearest vertical surface, gets right up in his face with both hands on the wall boxing him in while Dean's still shaking and reeling too much from the comedown to fight him off.

Sam tells him in a low rasp, “I woulda stuck my Goddamn gun in my mouth, Dean, _okay_? So you just be careful. You wanna run into danger on your own, fine. Just know wherever you go, you're taking me with you.”

Sam. Dean's whole world taken up by Sam. Sam under his skin, Sam in his veins, Sam pushing out everything else and taking up in the cracks he didn't already fill as easy as running water.

“With me?” he repeats back and Sam hesitates, eyes slanting to Crowley and back again with a pinning intensity.

“It's gotta be together, right?”

“I—” Crowley gets to his feet, swaying but upright, and Sam turns but doesn't move out of Dean's space, keeping one hand on the wall beside Dean's head, “—don't much care for the sound of that. So if you'll excuse me, I've a throne to get back to.”

Dean gets in a few parting words, “Don't get too comfortable,” and Crowley's expression turns dark before he clicks out.

They joint-stare at the empty space Crowley leaves behind and all that's left is Sam's confession ringing in his ears. Dean watches Sam instead, the tiny tic in Sam's jaw telling him he senses the exact second Dean's eyes catch on him.

“Could you kill him?” Sam asks softly, _still_ not looking. “If it came down to it?”

“If I had to.”

“You mean if I wanted you to.” Dean just doesn't answer that, stares helplessly instead because all the pieces are coming together for Sam and Dean's not entirely sure how the puzzle will look when they do. Sam turns back, then, expression like liquid, shifting between grim and determined and soft, gentle heat. “I won't. If he doesn't force us, I won't ask.”

He doesn't add _for you_ but Dean hears it anyway.

It’s a gesture that feels like a kick in the gut. Dean feels a little hysterical, a little awed by Sam’s sudden certainty when they’ve been mostly fumbling in the fog.

Dean finds he's grinning. “Sammy, you sure know how to sweep a guy off his feet.”

Sam's perfect look of sweet adoration turns into an incredulous bitchface—cocked head, tight little mouth, the works—and Dean gets to feel smug for half a second before Sam literally kicks his legs out from under him. He stumbles against the wall in a graceless flail and Sam whoops the loudest, dirtiest laugh, backed up to a safe distance with his hands pressing into his knees.

“Little bitch,” Dean says through his gritted teeth and makes a swipe for Sam, a fake one that Sam ducks from and crashes right into Dean's real hit to his side.

Sam doesn't sound any less smug. “Feeling swept off your feet yet, Dean?”

“I'll—sweep you. Off your. Feet,” is what Dean comes back with and Sam snorts.

“Pathetic.”

“ _You're_ pathetic.”

Sam nods dryly. “Creative.”

“ _You're_ creative.”

“We should get outta here.”

“ _You_ should get outta here.”

He'd forgotten this; how fucking childish he could be, what Sam's face scrunched up all fond and irritated and like Dean couldn't possibly be related to him looks like. Getting Sam to pull that face used to be one of his favorite pastimes and he doesn't indulge like he used to. Makes him feel like they're as young as they actually are, when all's said and done, and not a lot these days has that affect. After the utter shitstorm of the last twenty-four hours, he's so damn grateful for it he could cry.

Sam looks down at the first blade and then back up at Dean. “You wanna take it or should I?”

Dean appreciates the choice, if not Sam's obvious discomfort. “You take it,” he says, just to watch Sam's face smooth back out, then he adds lightly, a little sarcastic, “My sword arm's yours anyway, dude.”

Sam takes the moment to crouch for the blade, ducking his head down and away because he doesn't want Dean to see how much that affects him. But there's a smile on his lips that he can't hide; Dean knows the cut of Sam's jaw too well.

Half-baked allusions and vague acknowledgement; that's how they're rolling right now, then. Dean's fine with it; it's a well-worn cycle, a strictly regimented code they've operated by all their lives. Nothing about this is comfortable or familiar and falling back on old rules is a defence mechanism Dean's sworn by all his life.

And _in_ Dean's defence, the bright, full-frontal force of seriously contemplating Sam _taking_ what's rightfully his cripples Dean too much to think straight anyway.

 

~

 

Sam sprawls back against the headboard, one knee bent up.

He scrubs both hands over his face and Dean watches, all capability to _not watch_ out the window. He figures he can now, most everything sort of out in the open.

“You wanna take a picture or somethin'?” Sam asks, muffled into his palms and all pissy and self-conscious sounding and Dean smirks.

What he wants to do, what he can imagine himself vividly doing, is crawling up the length of Sam's body and sitting across the width of his narrow hips right where his shirt's ridden up.

“Uh-huh. Take your shirt off, Sammy, let’s make it good,” he drawls and Sam hurls his own boots right back at Dean. Feels good to know he can still be as obnoxious as possible and Sam will react like he ever did. “Alright, calm down, princess. I made you coffee,” and then he adds emphatically, “with the _machine_ and the foamed-up milk and shit.”

Sam blinks up at him. “Seriously?”

Dean fires back, “I'm the best big brother in the world,” without even thinking it through and Sam fists a hand in the bedsheets and splutters, appalled.

“Jesus Christ, Dean.”

“Like rippin' off a band aid,” he drawls, too-loud and awkward, and he leaves the room, stomach full of flying insects.

Sam drinks his coffee and lets out a pleased little hum and Dean feels smug as all hell and doesn't let up about it the entire drive to Dixon, Missouri. By the time they get there, Sam's already threatened to snap two tapes in half and pour scalding hot coffee over the Impala leather.

So Dean was right, really. Just like ripping off a band aid.

 

~

 

His hand is as steady as it's ever felt around the first blade.

And Gadreel's got a target painted right over his heart.

In the warp and bend of time slowing around him, the thick air clogging his chest, Sam sees what Dean's about to do before he can finish the job.

Sam shouts a warning and Cas gets two inhumanly strong arms around Dean's body and Gadreel goes only half butchered, the ache of an unsuccessful kill buckling part of Dean's strength and Sam's hand wrapping around his wrist confusing his synapses, sparking and dulling and sparking again until he's blind.

“Drop it,” Sam hisses and Dean rails against it, throws his weight and screams and sees nothing but fog where walls and tables used to be.

He's out of it for however long it takes them to throw him into lockup.

First thing he sees when the world clarifies is Sam looking tight and wary. Cas next to him afraid; _for_ him, not of him and that feels like all wrong because Dean doesn't think anyone's safe right now except Sam. So it's Sam he implores with a look, hoping to hell that he'll get it.

“I got this, Cas, could you go—"

“Check on Gadreel, of course.”

Cas steps out the door and Dean grinds out, “Shoulda let me kill him.”

“He's our only chance at getting to Metatron.”

“The angel who took you for a joyride? The angel who killed Kevin?”

Sam fires back, “Yeah, and it's me that wakes up in the middle of the night watching my hands kill Kevin, not you. And I'm telling you to stop.”

It echoes off the ugly stone walls and back again, hitting Dean's eardrums over and over. Just makes him wanna kill Gadreel all the more; an assuaging of his guilt, maybe. A way to give closure to Sam's open-ended nightmare. An end to how in his darkest moments, he's sickeningly fucking relieved that there was an angel around to violate his brother with.

Killing Gadreel makes sense in his head but his head isn't a clean place right now, he doesn't trust it with his brother so angry at him; Sam the yardstick by which Dean measures everything against these days.

“Jesus, Sam, I don't. I gotta—”

Pain, sudden and searing like a splintered hunk of wood through his heart, sucks the words back up into his throat and lodges them there.

“Dean?”

His emotions are a coursing hot mess, halfway to full speed but cut off before he can make the engine roar. It's an awful, fragmented yearning he feels with the first blade lying back out in the other room somewhere, the mark of Cain throbbing unsatisfied, Gadreel's vessel's blood slick on his hands and Sam feeling like the only lifeboat left on a sinking ship.

And so Dean falls to the core of him, his most basic instinct, all higher brain functions scattering like salt rounds. He buckles forwards, hands fisting in Sam's shirt at his sides and his face pressed into Sam's throat.

It's like being shocked by a hundred volts; he tenses so hard it hurts, feels like he's having a fucking seizure, awful wrecked whimpers pressing into Sam under his mouth.

Sam's panic-talking, his heart jack-hammering against Dean's chest, and Dean can't tell him he's fine because he can't speak even though Sam won't quit asking. He's vaguely annoyed by it in a far-off way where Sam's questions are stupid and Dean wishes he could get his body back under control enough to tell him that.

_Just fucking peachy, Sammy. Everything obviously good here._

Then his lungs clench violently like someone's stuck a hand under his ribs, a sudden liquid rush unpleasant in his throat and no way to suppress the convulsive cough that rips through him. There's blood on Sam's shirt collar, smeared against his neck. Dean can taste it metallic and coating his tongue.

Sam cries out, “Dean!” And then, “I'm getting Cas.”

“No,” Dean chokes and clings harder, rolls his forehead against Sam's collarbone and coughs more blood onto the floor between them.

Sam curls both hands around his neck and tells him desperately, “Dean, stop! Stop it. Let it go, just—just let it go, just like you told me, right? Just like you said, Dean,” and Dean shakes his head, _breathes_ , and the tremors ripping through his muscles start to calm, the vice-fist around his various organs loosens.

Sam's a Goddamn miracle worker or something, owning Dean’s body in some inexplicable way.

He feels better and worse for it; full-body death throes easing up but sick to his stomach with the thick taste of metal and plasma coating his mouth. He always used to tell Sam _get it all up, Sammy, you'll feel better_ and Sam starts rubbing his back like Dean used to when his brother was just a kid hunched over the toilet bowl.

All his weight slumps like his spine's cut in half and Sam's too unprepared to take it all, easing them both to the stone floor until Dean's kneeling as far between Sam's spread thighs as Sam can stubbornly drag him.

He wipes blood off Dean's mouth and chin with his shirtsleeve, Dean weakly slapping at him, croaking, “Quit it, I'm not five,” while Sam glares a thorough _shut the fuck up_.

“I couldn't tell, what with you acting so rational today and all.”

Dean swats him.

“Talk to me, Dean. Run me through this, come on.”

“Okay, okay.” Communication is key, he can totally do this. “I want the blade, I wanna kill something.”

Sam nods like the clever little bastard already suspected as much. “It's the mark, it wants you to kill, it wants you to be like Cain.”

Dean goes to rub at it, demanding now that Sam's drawn attention to it, but Sam catches his wrist on the move.

He yanks his hand out of Sam’s grip and snaps, “So let's go find something to kill,” because it's that simple, except Sam looks at him, positively offended. “What?”

“Look in a mirror _what,_ ” he says hotly. “If you think you're in any fit state to kill a pimped-up angel right now then you're fucking nuts.”

“Sam—”

“No. Shut up. We're gonna do this right, okay? Because I said so.”

Dean opens his mouth again, because, wow, that's the brattiest thing he's heard in a long time, but Sam cuts him off, his voice gone low, “That's an order, Dean,” and Dean shudders one long full-body shiver, words hooking under his skin.

Silence. And then Sam's pupils go huge, his cheeks flushing.

Even in this dank, stone hole Sam lights up; tiny whisping tendrils of energy curling around the edges of him like a halo. Dean soaks it up through proximity and that other thing, the thing that connects them; the blood, the veins, the whole system of them that Dean keeps feeding and feeding _off_ like an engine. He shoves his hand clumsy up Sam's shirt to touch the flat curve of his stomach because he wants to give it contact.

“Fuck, Dean.”

“Sorry, sorry.”

Doesn't know why he's apologizing. Maybe he's not, maybe he's just trying to get Sam to shut up before he says more words in that wrecked voice and Dean has to climb him right here in their fucking _dungeon_ like romance really is dead.

“I'm good, I swear,” Dean says belatedly while Sam holds completely still—deer-in-headlights still—except for his breathing, up and down with Dean's palm. “You're right, we need to be careful, make a plan.”

“Are you fucking with me right now so I'll let you out of here or are you actually agreeing with me?”

Dean considers it, takes his hand off Sam to remove the temptation to say whatever it'll take to get this whole show on the road. “I think.” He clears his throat and gestures to the mark. “I think this thing has some serious power over me. If you hadn't been here, I don't know what I woulda done.” And then he admits so reluctantly the words sound squeezed, “I don't think I can control it on my own.”

Sam clearly restrains himself from commenting something like _yeah, no shit._

“And I think Crowley wants me to lose myself to it.”

“What makes you say that?”

Dean watches Sam carefully when he says, “He said a knight needs a king.”

Sam's top lip curls barely enough to be noticeable. He takes a long pull of breath through his nose, looks down at the stone floor beside him. “He thinks you're gonna be his knight?” Dean shrugs and cocks his head, _yeah_. “That's his big plan. Mark himself up a soldier, turn him into a cold-blooded killer and then put him to work at the head of his demon army?”

“If he knew this is how it was gonna play out, yeah. If not, he does now.”

“Either way it's playing out to his advantage.”

Dean bristles at that, like he's some missile just waiting for someone to point him in the right direction. The instinct to fight occupies him like a foreign force, mercilessly galvanizing, and he pulls out of the V of Sam's thighs, hauling himself up to his feet with Sam staggering up after him.

Dean tells him roughly, “I don't fight for Crowley.”

“I know.”

“He's not a king, Sam. Hell is outta control and there’s no one with the power to contain it.”

Sam looks him in the eye and asks, low and dangerous, “You really wanna go down this road?“

“Yeah, yeah I do, because once Crowley's done, there's a million more just like him and what's our plan for dealing with that?”

“We had one, remember? Closing the gates.”

“Putting you on an altar like some sacrificial slab of meat.”

“You do know you're crazy right?” Sam asks him, completely rhetorical.

Dean heads for the door and Sam doesn't try to stop him. “Well I notice you haven't actually shut it down yet, Sam, so what does that mean, huh?”

“Dean,” Sam warns. “Cas is—”

“I don't give a fuck what Cas thinks about this.” It echoes around the hallway, following them all the way to the stairs, and Dean irrationally hopes Cas can hear them. “Heaven's his business, Hell's always been ours.”

“As subtle as you usually are, I think there's better ways to float this crap past our allies than a shouting match in the halls.”

Dean's drying blood itches on his collar and he heads for his room for a clean shirt.

“We have no idea what we're even doing here,” Sam goes on, hot on his heels. “And we've still got G.R.R. Metatron to deal with.” His hand clamps over Dean's shoulder right in the bedroom doorway. “ _Hey_.”

He drags Dean around, Dean tensing, blood thrumming all of a sudden, and it's hysterical because fifteen minutes ago he was vomiting up his windpipe; it's like he's fourteen again and can't decide whether he's angry or hungry or horny, the mark stripping away his ability to filter his emotions. He shoves at Sam but fists both hands in his shirt, a weird paradoxical reaction that sends him jerking after Sam's momentum.

“You feeling a little undercut here, Sammy? That it?” Dean sneers, raw and goading. “Gearing up for the big fight and big brother's got all the juice.”

It has barbs perfectly forged for hooking in Sam's skin; Dean knows, intimately, every weak spot to cut and crawl right under, made himself an artist at playing tunes on the strings of Sam's nerves.

And Sam knows it and always rises to Dean's best.

He gets this dark and filthy thing that can't possibly be called a smile curling up the corners of his mouth and it hits Dean like a sucker punch that this is it, this is the moment they've been working up to.

He can't breathe for a few frozen seconds, Sam's shirt caught in his fingers and Sam so tense Dean can feel it in the air—blood in the water, making Dean's mouth fill with spit.

Then Sam shoves him and Dean staggers back, laughing with his heart jack-hammering hard enough to crack concrete. He's gone from nought to sixty and back again more times today than a stock car, Sam the only real anchor he can grab onto to get off the collision-course. And maybe Sam's feeling the same way, too much up and down, Dean flying off the handle and Sam the only thing bringing him back down. Dean feels chaos rising in his brother, can only decipher one emotion from all the others in that twisting maelstrom of Sam's head; desire.

“Come on, Sammy. Remember Michigan—”

“Ionia County,” Sam interrupts. “Gave it up like a two-dollar whore, didn't you, Dean? I musta got you off in less than a minute you were so fuckin' desperate for little brother.”

Trust Sam to Hulk-smash years and layers of miles-thick ice in the bluntest, most undeniable way possible; finally— _finally_ —dragging that searing-hot memory out into the open, making it less like a hypothermia-induced hallucination in Dean's head.

“Committed the details pretty thorough there, kiddo.”

Sam doesn't play nice, never has when they're at their most vicious, and Dean gets to think _oh, shit_ for a second at the look on Sam's face before a hand comes up and grips his forearm, fingers closing over the mark right under Dean's rolled-up shirtsleeve.

His vision chokes pure black.

His breath comes in huge judders through his open mouth, pleasure surge like the edge before an orgasm attacking his nervous system. Sam holds him tight, hooks a foot around Dean's ankle and sends him sprawling back onto the bed; little bitch taking full advantage of his weak moment.

“How did you—“ Dean breathes, shaking, Sam crawling down on top of him, sliding up between Dean's accommodating legs. “Did you know?”

“I can feel it in you,” Sam tells him, awe not quite pushing out his cocksure drawl.

“I knew it, I _fucking_ knew it.”

Sam's a line of heat against him, slowly spreading his palms against Dean's hands in the mattress and locking their fingers together. He slides Dean's arms above his head, opens him up nice and vulnerable to all Sam's scrutiny.

“Like flipping switches. Once I turn it on, those other senses creep back in.”

Dean never knew this part of Sam before, separated himself from it so completely it was like it wasn't happening in Dean's world until the shit really hit the fan. Now he's thirsty for it, aching everywhere with his dick getting hard and the mark yearning for Sam instead of blood or maybe—maybe it's the exact same thing.

Sam hovers above him, the stretch of his neck arching until Dean feels lips brush delicately over the skin of his wrist, Sam's nose nuzzling Dean's veins like he's inhaling the prize. He moves down and down, dragging that soft pink mouth of his into the crook of Dean's elbow.

It's still something they can come back from; it's just skin on skin, just Sam and Dean and how fucked up they already are. And then Sam—his _brother,_ his little brother, _so fuckin' desperate for little brother—_ opens up the heat of his mouth over the mark of Cain and sears a spit-slick kiss there with his tongue and teeth and Dean's back arches like he's been electrocuted.

They clash in the middle, Sam grinding down where Dean comes up, the obvious length of Sam's dick hard in his jeans hitting him with a rough streak of friction to make his heels dig in the mattress.

Sam keeps that mouth on him, doesn't let up his assault on Dean's hypersensitive skin until he's a useless trembling pile of flesh and bones, flexing his fingers in Sam's grip and rocking against him and unable to string a single sentence together.

He turns his head against the mattress into the soft curl of Sam's ridiculous hair and watches Sam's _ridiculous_ mouth work under the curtain of it, the plush spread of his lips on—that's _Dean's_ skin he's worshipping; it's just unreal.

“Sam—Sammy,” he whispers and tries for something more substantial, “ _Sam_ ,” but it just sounds parched and road-burned.

Sam tips his forehead against Dean's arm, rolls his head to look Dean in the eye. “Jesus Christ, Dean,” he groans and Dean knows what he must look like, eyes all swallowed up black.

He feels it down to that tumorous part of him that only feels real around actual fire-and-brimstone demons and tucked away down there, burning bright as a falling star, is the overwhelming sense of his brother.

It hits him that he never would've known unless every damn thing in the universe hadn't brought them to this point; that piece of Sam would have sat dormant forever and Dean would never have touched it.

He can't believe he was ever afraid of it.

Dean licks his lips, blinks until the haze breaks and he's pretty sure his eyes are human again, and Sam stares, a jerk of a shiver tensing through his stomach where they're pressed together. Then he surges forward and they're kissing, instantly open-mouthed, Sam's tongue dipping in slick and heavy and Dean kissing him back like he's starving for it.

He yanks a hand free from Sam's giant paw and makes a solid fist in his hair, angling Sam off-center and mouthing against his bottom lip, the corner of his mouth, licking back inside him as slow as he can because it feels filthy, doing this to Sam; his brother all loosely rolling hips and straining arms and sweat-damp skin.

“Sammy, look at me,” he murmurs and Sam pulls back just enough, Dean's hand gentle on him now, scraping and stroking patterns into his scalp like he's calming something wild.

Dean sucks one side of his own bottom lip between his teeth and bites down until he feels a stinging pop and Sam—Sam's chest heaves, deep and ragged in and out.

Blood pools in the seam of Dean's lips, overflows onto his chin.

And Sam asks in a tight and desperate voice, “We sure about this?” and we, he said _we,_ and he just looks so damn overwhelmed, Dean feels it pouring off him in waves, like every one of Sam's higher impulses are fighting over which level of _okay_ - _notokay_ this is.

Dean looks him right in the eye and when he speaks. His blood trickles inside his mouth, coating his tongue for the second time today. “It's different from before,” he tells Sam, so fucking sure. “It's different from Ruby. This is me, Sam. You and me. It's already yours, man.”

He's got a whole fragmented speech going on up in his head that maybe he's been subconsciously preparing for weeks now but Sam doesn't need much more than that and that's fine; Dean's not much of a speech maker anyway.

It knocks into Dean like a ton of falling bricks; what Sam's about to do, what it means. A lifetime of Dad's orders and Sam's small hand in Dean's and motel rooms and target practice and that time Sam almost killed himself falling off a roof and Dean cycled him all the way to the emergency room and _all of it_ , their entire timeline twisting into a new shape.

For whole seconds, Dean's paralyzed.

And Sam, who always figures out what to do in the end, tells him, “It's okay, it's okay,” like he means it.

He draws his flat tongue up Dean's chin, rasping through stubble to chase the bloodline between Dean's parted lips.

Sam swallows it down and makes this sound, this shocking moan, ripped right out of him. He shakes, free hand fisting in the mattress by Dean's head. _Overwhelming_ , Dean thinks again, his head spinning and every wet, blood-slick slide of Sam's tongue like a throbbing heartbeat through him, centering in the mark on his skin like a focal point.

He drags a hand hard down Sam's back and into his back pocket, pulls out his switchblade and pushes it between them to get his delirious brother to pay attention.

Sam's a magpie when it really comes down to it, and once he catches the flash of silver he draws back and kneels upright between Dean's legs, leaving far too much cold air behind. His mouth is stained red and he's got honest to God _sex hair_ sticking up in the shape of Dean's fingers.

“Would you fucking look at you,” Dean groans so low his throat scrapes. He cups his dick through his jeans because _fuck,_ it aches like he's been blue-balled for a year.

And Sam just gives him this face, a savage leer, danger skirting the edges because Sam's sexuality is threatening, Dean's always known. Sixteen and Sam'd look at him like that and it was like the darkening skies of the apocalypse or some shit. Dean had known he was in for it since the summer of '99; long yawning stretches of time working on cars in Bobby's lot where Sam would slouch around in loose shorts watching Dean sweat and fix up engines.

Never fucking leaving Dean alone with those dark eyes threatening a war.

Sam gropes two hands under Dean's t-shirt, his scorching rough palms on overheated skin. Dean tries to articulate, “Off, get it off, come on,” and wrestles himself out of his plaid, arches up so Sam can pull off his t-shirt with a huff of a laugh. He drags Sam down by the back of his shirt collar and pulls the whole lot forward over Sam's head, still buttoned.

Then he presses the switchblade into Sam's hand.

“Goddamnit.” Sam's all tensed muscles propped up on one hand in the mattress at Dean's shoulder and Dean drags his blunt nails up Sam's bare sides, his fingers over hard flesh. Sam shudders, “Jesus, Dean,” and dips down, kisses Dean some more, painfully indulgent. “I didn't, I never thought,” he murmurs, damp words sticking against Dean's mouth. “Things I wanna do to you, I can't even think straight.”

“Just fuckin' cut me already,” Dean groans, pleads, whatever, just desperate now, sparking up in his skin like the crackling start of a wildfire.

Sam presses the flat of the blade against Dean's split lip and moves it down, cool sting of metal on Dean's chin, grazing under his jaw, pressing into his throat. Sam watches the blade without blinking, swallowing thick and compulsive like his mouth is watering and Dean's swallows too like a reflex, an action-reaction, knife-point just scraping into his Adam’s apple and the soft, fleshy dip underneath.

Sam stops inches above Dean's right nipple, curving the knife sideways so the sharp end bites into his skin.

“Come on, Sammy, give it to me,” he says roughly and Sam remembers it too, just as vividly as Dean does; Sam's life-altering words with the snow falling.

He makes a cut, Dean's skin parting.

And Dean breaks out in shivers at the keen sting, arching his neck when Sam's mouth parts against his nipple, pressing and gently sucking. The flat of his tongue drags up over the open wound, the tip prodding against the sore edges. Sam grinds him back into the bed with a purpose this time, like he's trying to get off with a mouth full of Dean's blood.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Dean mutters, insubstantial. He tries again, trying to recognize the sound of his own voice, “Sam, Sam, look at me,” and Sam does, has to with Dean's hand back tight in his hair like it's the only way Dean can control him.

There's more red smeared across Sam's bottom lip, darker than before, wetter, evidence that it's fresh, and for some mind-numbing amount of seconds Dean can't take his eyes off it.

That small, dark knot inside his brother is pulsing; Dean can feel it start to unravel.

Sam's half-crazy or something; pupils dilated and breath coming in uneven bursts. Dean's most fundamental instinct kicks in, good to know that even though Sam's dick is a hard line pressed up between his legs that he can still remember _watch out for Sammy._ He rolls them, straddling Sam's hips and one hand pressed hard into Sam's chest to kill his urge to rear up.

“Shh, I got you,” he murmurs, sits back and pulls the switchblade free from Sam's grip. He cuts a careful, shallow line over the blue stand-out veins on his wrist and sees Sam's eyes go wide.

Dean hunches forwards with his arm angled, making a tight fist over Sam's opening mouth, Sam's tongue wet and soft and catching the drops of blood Dean squeezes out. He watches Sam's throat work to swallow it down, arresting sight making him feel drugged and loopy and then frantic. He tugs at Sam's jeans with his free hand, parts the V of Sam's fly and curls his hand around the shape of his dick though his boxers.

Sam grips Dean's hovering forearm with a shocked moan.

_Touching your little brother's dick, hope you're aware of that._

Dean breathes a shaky, fascinated laugh. He rubs hard, curve of his fingers and palm hot and damp on Sam. Sam who pulls Dean's wrist to his mouth and sucks wide, wet kisses that send heat like bullets scattering to his dick, to the mark, to his quick-beating heart.

“Fuckin' weird, Sammy,” he says softly, feels like he could come just from Sam's mouth on him given some decent friction.

And Sam mutters against his skin, “Come on, Dean,” like maybe it's the same for him too, like he can't even wait that long.

It gets Dean moving, attacking his own button and zipper and finally, _finally_ , feeling air on his cock. This isn't how they did it last time, no actual skin on display, just the two of them too young and coming in their jeans and acting like it never happened. It's diametrically opposed; Dean's got both eyes fixed on Sam and then he's got Sam's dick in his hand and he could make a grocery list of all the ways this is better.

Sam groans and bites him—actually _bites_ him. His mouth on Dean is a captivating center point of sharp pain, the soft lap of his tongue rhythmic and fucking obscene. He rocks into Dean's grip and scrapes his teeth and Dean's gonna get him off over this, make his little brother come to the tune of something dark and powerful; cursed Winchester blood pumped straight from Dean's veins into Sam like a back-alley transfusion.

Dean holds them both in a trembling grip, strokes them together once to get his bearings and can't wrap his head around how purely good it feels; like the simple act of eating a cheeseburger after forty years in Hell, something like that, a decadent indulgence he thought he might never have.

“C'mere,” Sam mutters and Dean snaps out of it, coming down where Sam reaches up to curl a palm around the back of his neck and there's a clash of teeth and tongues that splits Dean's lip right back open until they both taste like iron.

He kicks himself into action, then, his hand spasming tight and pulling long, rough strokes between them that feel like lengthy strides towards a sheer cliff-edge. He's too desperate to concentrate on anything but how it feels, the technicalities lost completely and the feel of his knuckles bumping against tense muscles making it almost devastatingly real.

Dean doesn't think he's jacked himself off with as little finesse in a long fucking time but it's still the best damn thing he's ever known

Sam's roaming hands on him stutter and then he comes with a muffled cry, teeth sinking into Dean's lip. Spunk slicks up his fingers, makes the slide sweeter, and he finds his spine bowing, mouth tearing free from Sam so he can press his forehead into Sam's collarbone and watch his hand wring out the last of what Sam's got, the streaks of white sticking against both their stomachs, spilled against where he can see his thumb pressed tight under the head of Sam's dick.

Sweat mottles his brother like raindrops from his throat to his hips and that's the last thing Dean sees, one inch from his face, before he shuts his eyes and loses it, pressing his lips into Sam's chest to muffle the moan that rips out of him, the muttered words, Sam's name and curses until he can't feel his limbs.

He shudders, vaguely aware of flopping horizontal on his back with the taste of Sam and sex and metal in his mouth. He licks the backs of his teeth, rolls his tongue, savoring the taste.

He waits for the panic to set it, Sam beside him no doubt doing the exact same.

Dying come itches on his stomach and Dean can't find the words to even _act_ cool in the face of that fact.

And then Sam says, “Wonder what Cas thinks we're doing right now,” and Dean almost chokes on his own throat, half a laugh, half a sound of actual despair.

“Christ, Sam, could you not—”

“Just sayin'.”

He doesn't know if that technically counts as tension broken, but Dean blows out a long sigh and leans up on his shaky elbows.

“How d'you feel?”

Sam lets loose a matching sigh. “Weird. Hot. Umm.”

“Yeah.” Feels like he's got lightning running through his veins. Feels like he's got Sam all over him.

“What about you? And the—y'know.”

“The fact my eyes turned black?”

More silence that Sam eventually breaks with a hard nudge to Dean's side. “Don't act so special. I did it first.”

Dean tips back his head and slants his eyes over to his brother. “Did you do it during hardcore incest, though?” He smirks at the long-suffering shake of Sam's head. “Because I think what counts here is who did it the baddest. Go big or go home, bro.”

“I would _love_ if you didn't call me that right after we fucked around.”

Sam's gritting his teeth around a grin, Dean can tell. He looks Dean in the eye without shame or fear and with a whole bunch of fondness and for that, Dean feels okay. More okay than he has since—fuck, he can't even remember. Maybe since before Dad died, since the day Sam knocked Dean on his ass on the floor of his college-boy apartment and said _Dean_ like the word was still well-worn in his mouth. Like he still said it every day.

Dean doesn’t wanna shatter the moment but there’s shit to deal with outside this room and it ain’t going away. “You wanna go talk to Cas?”

Sam evidently disagrees. “Nah,” he says smoothly, stretching long and languorous, folding his arms behind his head. “He can wait.”

They’re still in it, the haze of it, and Dean’s skin shivers all over again, singing out for Sam to touch him. Sam’s right to be smug, Dean’s fucking nuts over this; he feels insatiable, like Sam could ruin him and it wouldn’t ever be enough.

Sam rolls onto his side, propped up on his elbow. He fits a hand over Dean’s chest, long fingers pressing into the fresh cut.

“We got stuff to do, man,” Dean reminds him softly.

Sam cocks his head, _maybe,_ and scrapes blunt nails across to Dean’s arm crooked up beside his head, bumping over the raised knot of the mark, and Dean jerks and groans, reaching up to grip the back of Sam’s neck.

“Feels good, huh?” Sam fucking _croons_. “Wonder why.”

“Do I look like a give a shit about the technicalities?”

Sam draws his fingertips down over it and then back up again, rhythmically flexing his knuckles until he’s toying with it, winding up Dean’s sensitive nerves. “How good?”

He licks his lips, stretching over Dean. Sam bypasses Dean’s mouth completely and Dean braces for the sensation, Sam’s new fascination with the reactions he can pull from his tongue on that one raw bit of yearning skin.

“Fuck,” he groans. “Really, _really_ fucking good, Sam.”

“Then Cas can wait.”


End file.
